Why I hate consoles...

...It dawned on me this afternoon that I'm really starting to hate consoles. That's not strictly fair, in the sense that I don't really hate Nintendo, or Sega, but I certainly do hate Sony & Microsoft.

Why? One word - Ports. I am thoroughly fed up with companies putting out piss-poor console ports of games where the sole "extra feature" is the ability to play it in a resolution above PAL/NTSC. Some of you might remeber my rant about GTA Vice City and the frankly appalling way in which the PC version suffers from the same CD-streaming car pop-up that the PS2 version is afflicted with.

Because the Playstation & Xbox have a single company behind them, they can buy the exclusive rights to games, such as Vice City, for 6 months+ before allowing them to appear on other platforms. In those 6 months, developers could easily make modifications to the game in order to take advantage of the PCs superior just-about-everything (except maybe peripherals for some genres), but they don't, they add a few options menus for control redefinition and graphics options and they chuck it out with a big fanfare about how much better it is that the console version. The biggest culprit here is, of course, the Xbox, which thanks to its PC-like architecture seems to make developers think they can port to the PC without making any changes to the game.

What is even worse is when games are released on both the PC & Console at the same time, almost inevitably leading to identical products which, while perfectly acceptable for a console, utterly suck on a PC. Sometimes, it even causes them to commit the ultimate sin - not allowing you to re-define your controls.

Games such as Halo - initially intended to be a stunningly promising PC game - are snatched by console manufacturers in order to give their platform a 'killer app' to help overcome the competition. Despite promises that Halo (PC) would stem from the original code from before MS bought Bungie, it ended up being nothing more that another lame console port.

The other problem with porting games is that inevitably run badly. Being optimised for console architecture leads to all kinds of performance problems on a PC - look at Halo, even with a top of the range nVidia card (It's an nVdia optimised game after all) it's barely playable in 1280x960 and frequently lags up in 1024x768 with normal detail settings. In comparison, I can run UT2K3 - arguably a much more graphically impressive game) in 1600x1200, maximum detail, with no slowdown, on a 9800 (Again, it's nVidia optimised).

Perhaps what we need is some kind of PC Gaming body which can act on behalf of PC's in order to obtain exclusive rights to forthcoming games before the console giants can get in there and ruin them for us. Regardless, I can only see the problem getting worse as Sony & Microsoft vie for the increasingly lucrative console market.

Apologies for going on a bit, but when I feel strongly about something I tend to waffle quite a lot.

We continue...

Once more fate kicks me in the bollocks and then stands laughing while I writhe in agony...

...You should by now be aware of my pursuit of a certain lady with whom I work. Well, last week I finally decided to put things beyond all doubt and just corner her about it.

Sparing you the details (for fun & profit) I was shot down like a British fighter jet in US airspace (Woo, tasteless jokes too). From what she said I'm hoping it won't affect our friendship, although I suppose only time will tell on that count.

The odd thing is that I don't feel nearly as bad as I thought I would. I have a feeling that it's partly because I'd prepared myself for the worst (i.e. the 'I never want to speak to you again' routine) and so in comparison this is pretty light stuff. Equally, I guess I'm no worse off that I was before, aside from no longer being able to maintain the illusion that a gorgeous, witty, intelligent woman might actually find me attractive. Of course I could just be in shock - the full reality might hit me in a few days and leave me emotionally crippled, we'll just have to wait and see I guess.

Ah well, I guess I'm going to be single I while longer - and look at that, a whole thread about my life composed, edited and posted while not under the influence of any alcohol at all.

I think I'm going to skip my lectures this afternoon and go home to wallow in my own self pity (and maybe engage in some mindless videogame-related violence to work the frustration out of my system).

Spad.

To whinge or not to whinge...

...Actually, for once, it's the latter - sort of. Anyway, last week - Thursday to be exact - was the end of broadcast Formal for Burn FM. Put simply, it was great - Good food, good company, reasonably priced drinks, pretty photos and decent music.

So, you may ask, what's with the title? Well, everything was going fairly well (aside from having to borrow my housemate's smart shoes, which are 2 sizes too small for me) until the walk home. I did the usual thing of getting a Taxi to Selly Oak with everyone else and then walking home, which was bad enough with the shoes, but it was worse because it got me thinking, as it so often does.

The problem is that when I start thinking I tend to run it out to its inevitable conclusion - this is a bad thing most of the time. I thought it would be a fantastic idea, once I'd got home, to compose an email; not inherently a bad move, you might think, but you don't know the half of it yet. The recipient of said email was Antonia and the content was a little honest, to put it mildly. When I thought about it in the morning, I realised that this was really a pretty good thing, because it has meant that I've finally got off my arse and told her how I feel - the problem is that she doesn't check her email that often.

So now I'm stuck in a situation whereby I have no idea whether or not the email has been read. It also means that I can't spend excessive amounts of time sitting around in the studio because if she wonders in and checks her email while I'm there it could be a little awkward. With any luck, I might get some kind of response within the next few days, otherwise I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do about it.

To top things off, on Sunday I managed to break not only my motherboard, but also my £300 graphics card, which has now set me back £350 to replace everything and a good 5 days without a usable PC aside from my server. That's all very well and good, but I've got 580Gigs of data sitting on my PC that I can't get access to at the moment. Grrrrrrrr!

Jumping around a little bit, on Saturday I went back home for Jo's 21st. It was a mildly depressing affair, with much feeling sorry for myself being carried out. On the plus side I did get to meet up with everyone again and discovered that Hughsie's girlfriend is a suprisingly well-balanced individual who harbours no obvious psychopathic tendencies - which is decidedly odd for someone going out with Hughsie.

I think that's just about everything of note that's happened to me in the last week. Stay tuned for another update soon.

Spad.

Good God...

...That was morbid and depressing. I apologise whole-heartedly for the use of a Girls Aloud lyric and promise that the next time I get drunk and maudlin I'll just shut the fuck up and leave my whinging until I've sobered up and had time to think about not writing rambling drivel such as you see below.

Again, sorry.

Spad.